Leaving
by YlvaThorgalsdottir
Summary: Instead of waiting until Bella's eighteenth birthday, Edward decides to leave at the end of Twilight.
1. Left

_All things Twilight belong to Stephenie Meyer_

* * *

**Chapter 1**

* * *

When I woke up in the hospital, he was gone.

There was a note from Alice, saying: "He insisted. Please forgive us. Love, Alice." I read it over and over again, until the nurse came back and told me it was time to sleep.

* * *

Back in Forks life was as dreary and grey as I had expected it to be before I met Edward. It felt empty; everything I did felt mechanical and meaningless. I just couldn't bring myself to feel sorry for myself; I hadn't deserved him, after all. I had stupidly gone off to sacrifice myself after he told me to take care of myself. He shouldn't have stayed as long as he did: my Mom had told me he had waited in the hospital while I was in a coma. _He felt responsible for me_, I reasoned, _just not happy enough with me to stay long enough to say good-bye._

School was dull. My math homework was easier after Edward's tutoring, and English and History was more interesting with the different perspectives I had after spending time around the Cullens. Spanish was simple after spending my whole childhood near the Mexican border, being in the room reading while Renee watched Spanish-speaking soaps and whatnot. Why didn't we learn French instead, since we were closer to the Canadian border? Every day was the same: I went to school, drove home, did homework, made dinner, did more homework or housework or, when there was none, just read. I needed to keep my mind focused on something, to stave off the hollow feeling inside me. "Sleeping" was like falling into a pitch black bottomless hole; I woke up unrested and feeling like I hadn't slept at all. I couldn't remember dreaming.

Charlie let me work through it on my own, as he said. Mostly he either worked late or went fishing, and I didn't mind, though I suspected him of just not wanting to deal with sappy teen girl feelings. Not that I had any; I felt hollow all the way through, without room for grief.

With my unsatiable need to keep my mind focused, I started driving to Seattle on weekends to visit the library there. It was bigger than the one in Forks, and there were better bookstores than in Port Angeles. There were books in at least two dozen languages. I would read anything and everything; with intense mental focus it was easy to read three or four books in a day. It continued like this for three months, until I aced every one of my exams exept P.E., after having been too distracted for it to occur to me to be nervous.

But once the summer vacation came, it all fell apart.

I woke up the morning after my final exam and just laid there, staring at the celing. I felt disoriented and depressed. My inner vacuum was caving in. There was nothing more for me to focus on, nothing I could pretend was worth getting out of bed to do. Edward wasn't there. Alice had left with him, as well as their foster parents who had obviously thought it would be best for him. Esme had once said she wanted me to be with him, not because I was good enough for him, but because I was what he wanted. And he no longer wanted me. And it was my own fault for pulling that stunt trying to save my Mom, who if I'd stopped to think about it at all I would have realized had never been in any real danger at all. There was just no way she could get from Florida to Arizona in so short time. I wanted to hit myself, but I couldn't move. My arms lay frozen at my sides. I felt cold.

After some time, Charlie knocked on my bedroom door: "Bella, are you awake? I thought I'd let you sleep in, but it's two in the afternoon. Don't you think it's time to get up?" "Yes, Dad," I croaked, making no move to get anywhere. He left anyway, probably to go fishing, and after staring at the celing for awhile longer I managed to gather the resolve to swing my legs over the edge of the bed. The alarmclock on my nightstand now said four p.m.

It was sunny outside, as one might expect from a day in July, but I felt cold. When I reached for my clothes I saw why: my arm was extremely thin, the bones and sinews protruding. I looked down at my body: It looked emaciated. I guessed I hadn't had much of an appetite over the past few months. All I could think of now was that I had to find Edward.

By the time I remembered that I hadn't eaten at all that day, I was already on the road headed towards the Cullens' house. My stomach growled once as if to make it's opinion clear, then kept quiet.

* * *

The Cullen house looked deserted, even from the driveway. It looked well kept from the outside, but the whole place felt abandonned. I walked around the main house once, looked in through the glass wall, felt the emptiness grow when the sight confirmed my what I believed. The furniture was covered in white sheets; the piano still there, uncovered. Walking around to the front, the thought occured to me that if I triggered a burglar alarm, that would make the owners come back to press charges, or at least to get in touch. I looked for a rock to throw through a window, but after months of near-starvation I hadn't the strength to break a single glass panel. I hacked away at it anyway, but to no avail. There were cracks, but not enough to make the damn thing shatter. In the end I gave up and sat down on the porch, trying to think.

Alice. How could she have just left? I knew Rosalie hated my guts, and the others either found me amusing (like Emmett) or saw me as Edward's pet, or maybe both. But not Alice; she had been my friend. She had been the one to leave a note, as well as the one to make first contact. I remembered the day Tyler's van had crashed with my parked truck, when she had come over and led me away from the site maybe with maybe fifteen seconds' margin. I had shuddered to think what might have happened had I stood closer to the car - the whole thing made more sense once I learned of her talent - but now I would have welcomed that fate over this one, I finally admitted to myself. Death - not to exist at all - would have been better than walking the Earth like a hollow shell...

My fingers brushed something metal beside me. I picked it up and stared at it. A key? Who would leave a key to their house when they had no intention of returning in the immediate future? My starving brain slowly put the picture together. Alice... she must have _seen_ that I would be the first one to come here, she must have seen me sit here wishing for death... No, that didn't make sense. If she had seen me wish for death she might have done more... what? What could she have done? She was Edward's sister; she couldn't go against her family. But still...

My eyes went to the door. Maybe? There was no guarantee, but I had to try it. After all, why else would they, or one of them, have left the key out here? I put the key in the door, turned it... and the door slid open. Apprehensively, I walked in, half expecting Emmett to have left the key after having rigged booby traps for the benefit of potential thieves.

Nothing happened. It smelled musty, and the sun shone through the glass wall revealing dust motes, but there was no sound. I walked slowly to the stairs, feeling sure that if it were Alice she would have left me something. A note, a clue, anything. In her and Jasper's room on the second floor, where there was only a bed and a stripped book case, I found it. It was just a piece of paper with one word on it: Alaska.


	2. Alaska

_All your base are belong to Stephenie Meyer. _

_Thank you for all the reviews._

* * *

**Alaska**

I didn't get in the car right away. I calmed myself first, and filled my growling stomach with water from the bathroom tap. My heart beat like a rabbit's - up to 325 beats per minute, I'd read somewhere - and it took several deep breaths before I could even trust myself to walk down the stairs without vertigo.

Given all this, it _was_ irresponsible of me to try to drive home. I had to get there somehow, though, so I kicked my truck into gear and made my way slowly to the closest gas station to eat something. After that I could only drive home while my brain resumed working.

_Alaska,_ it said, over and over. _You should have figured it out long ago. Where else would they go that it'd be so overcast, and Carlisle could still practice medicine with an American degree? It had to be the US. There's no point in moving to Europe just to get away from you._ That last one stung. I tried to shake the internal dialogue and focus on the road instead, but my mind went on: _Besides, he can't run from you_ _forever_. But if he doesn't want to be around me, how can I justify following him at all?_ Alice obviously left you a clue so you'd _follow _it, _my brain replied to that. My decision to leave for Alaska was obviously not up for negotiation. In a way it was a relief: the imperative to get to Alaska as quickly as possible was too strong to argue with, and in a way that left my moral considerations out of it. I would have to deal with the aftermath afterwards, but I was willing to do so if it meant I would be free of the uncertainty about how it really was. I _had_ to know if there was a way to fix things with Edward, and if Alice really had wanted to leave. If she had ever, in fact, considered us friends. I had to get there right now, just to square things with anyone I could.

I would have gone straight to Seattle if I had thought I had the strength for the journey right away. The sensible part of me knew better: it told me I would need preparations, no matter how summerly it was up there. My plan was forming already. I would roll up my necessary clothes in a bag (I'd read that the military packed clothes that way; it made better use of space), buy a plane ticket, eat well before leaving and perhaps sleep on the plane. It felt like I could rest now, that I had a goal and a purpose again. There was no telling how long my sense of purpose would last, of course; maybe I would get there and find they had left again, leaving no more clues for me to follow. After all, even if Alice had seen me find the note only to do the most obvious thing, she might have changed her mind later... Or she had left it there on a whim, but with what little I knew of her gift it seemed unlikely that she could do _anything_ without seeing the consequences. Something about that didn't seem right, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

I tried to jump out of the car after I'd parked in our driveway, but ended up stumbling awkwardly instead. My legs felt weak. I felt dizzy. I decided to eat first, then pack. Inside I met another obstacle: my father. I hadn't even thought about what I would say to him. _Hi, Dad. I'm just going to Alaska to find my ex who didn't want me because I disobeyed him. You won't have a problem with that even though I'm still underage, right?_ I didn't say that. Instead I said: "Hi... Dad," to which he gave an absent nod. He didn't seem very interested in being around me anymore, probably because I was thin and ugly... _What a horrible thing to think!_ I reprimanded myself silently. Charlie had ducked into the living room before I had finished thinking that, which somehow felt even more like rejection. I went to the kitchen, quietly telling myself that I was being silly and that my father still loved me, although he was even more awkward than I in terms of dealing with emotions. Neither of my parents were great at that, I reflected while pouring milk into a glass. That must be why I responded so impulsively to feelings, although I was fairly rational in other matters. I cooked and ate something - possibly oatmeal - while lost in thought. What did this imply about my relationship with Edward? Could it be why he left me without so much as a good-bye, instead of because I had risked my life by confronting another vampire. It occured to me that I had never thought much about _why_, mostly because it had been too painful to think about. I had just surmised that he'd meant what he said about holding me responsible for it if anything happened to me and done so when something _did_ happen to me; and that, with his possessiveness toward me, he had been jealous of James in a vampiric sort of keep-off-my-food kind of way. It had been strongly implied from the beginning that the reason he cared about me at all was that I smelled better to him than anyone else ever had, and that he felt protective of me because his code of ethics compelled him to. If he had been like James, he would just have eaten me and been done with it. Since he wasn't like James, he found some way to care too much about my well-being to hurt me - and I never knew how he accomplished that, it must have seemed impossible, but with his supernaturally strong willpower he had done it.

I walked upstairs as I tried to think about this. So, had he left me because I was a poor girlfriend? It made sense, in a way, but then why didn't he leave me sooner? I got to my room, but couldn't find the resolve to pack right away. I had to think, and to rest. I felt more tired than I ever had in my life. I crawled into bed with my clothes on and went out like a light.

* * *

When I woke up the next day, I felt more rested than I could remember feeling. The alarm clock said it was just over 1 in the afternoon. I rose out of bed with renewed strength.

In the kitchen I found a note from Charlie, saying he'd gone fishing with Billy and was planning to stay over at the reservation so they could go fishing again early in the morning. _Well, that's convenient, _I thought. It was odd how things were just falling into place once I knew what to do. Maybe Alice had seen that, too? I didn't think she would have "invited" me to come on my own if she hadn't been known - at least with some probability - that it would be safe. But I could think about her strange gift later, if I wanted; now I just wanted to get going. Three cups of camomille tea later, because I couldn't bring myself to force my stomach to work right after the weird mixture of foods I'd given it yesterday, I went to my room to pack. I found hiking boots in the attic, no doubt Renee's, but still usable. I showered and found my laptop, which Edward had given me back when I saw how much my old computer slowed me down, which in turn explained why I hadn't used it since last March. I hesitated before hitting "order" on the airline's webpage: while I had been pleasantly surprised to find I had nearly 10.000 dollars in my account, having thought I'd spent more of it on gas and books, I realized I was uncertain whether I could buy a plane ticket for myself being under eighteen. I was too used to doing things myself, I just rarely considered it at all relevant that I was not yet eighteen.

After a bit of hand-wringing, I decided to chance it. I couldn't use Charlie's credit card details, although I'd memorized them in case he lost his card. There was the option of driving - through Canada. Problem was (1) it was probably too far for my truck, (2) I had trouble with road maps - although I was fine with regular maps - and (3) there was no telling what I'd need to prepare for on that hypothetical trip. I didn't know how much food I'd need to bring or what to do if I snowed in while driving over the montains. Maybe I'd run into more red-eyed vampires on the way - I was absurd that vampires' diets should change their eye color, animals had just as red blood as humans did - and it wasn't like I knew the whereabouts of James' friends or whether they would feel at all friendly toward me after what the Cullens did to their leader; and they were hardly the only ones out there. In the end I ordered a plane ticket to Juneau over the phone, which probably meant Charlie would have an easy time tracking me since I wasn't taking the phone with me, but hey. He had been a cop for thirty years, I doubted anything could keep him from finding his daughter if he wanted to. I only wished I'd had that same ability when it came to Edward.

By the time I boarded the plane, I had been through multiple checks. In the last minute I had thought of forging Renee's signature, and that probably saved me. On the plane I found that I was unable to sleep and went through the downloads of ebooks on my laptop instead. Then I suppose I fell asleep anyway, because a flight attendant woke me up and told me I needed to leave the plane, which was almost empty.

In the fresh air outside the airport I felt like I could think clearly again. I was tired - my sleep debt had gathered over months, and there was just no way a couple fairly good nights of sleep could make up for it - but renewed. Closer to Edward, at the very least closer to Alice. I knew roughly what direction to go to get to Denali from where I was - that was where I'd heard mention of the Cullens having vampire "relatives". I didn't know _how_ to get there. I didn't think I could rent a car, even if I forged my mother's signature again, and even my conscience had limits. I couldn't afford to _buy_ a car, not one that could take me from Juneau to Denali and maybe longer, anyway. Maybe I should have flown to Anchoage instead, but then I'd have had to wait one more day and that was out of the question. So much for being prepared.

Dizziness reminded me that I hadn't eaten in awhile. I ate, bought some more food to take with me, and eventually decided to take the first train or bus going north and just keep it up until I neared Denali National Park. Once there, however, what would I do? Wing it again? I supposed a national park was a good place to live if you were a vampire feeding on animals instead of people, but that didn't exactly help me with my current problem. How would I find them? Just go in and shout? More likely to draw humans than vampires.

I put the problem out of my mind and went to find the train station. I would have time to deal with it later. I _had _to find Edward; I would find a way. I just couldn't _think_ of Edward right now, because doing so reminded me that he had left me, which was a thought so intensely painful that I had been trying to suppress it for months and I _could_ not deal with it just yet. Not until I knew.

The train to Anchorage took several hours. I tried to put Edward and Alice and all the others out of my mind the way I was used to, by reading intently, but it turned out not to be so easy. I felt sure I was drawing closer to them with every minute, and though there were a number of interesting textbooks and too-old-for-copyright ebooks on my laptop I had a hard time not bouncing up and down in my seat for excitement. _Maybe you'll see them again today already, _I tried not to tell myself. _Or tomorrow, for sure tomorrow. _I had lost track of time: the midnight sun glowed on the horizon, and that was day enough for me. On the platform in Anchorage I almost fell over with exhaustion.


	3. Denali

_All things Twilight belong to Stephenie Meyer._

* * *

**Denali**

I slept on the bus to the National Park, even though I'd promised myself not to. Fortunately, all my things were still with me when I woke up.

There were guided tours through the park, one of which I'd signed up for. I didn't know how much money was left in my account, but I felt it didn't matter now that I was so close to my goal. I had bought a pocket book on the way; I'd missed reading from paper instead of from a screen. It was just a cheap copy of _Gulliver's Travels, _to keep me preoccupied. The scenery was beautiful, don't get me wrong, but I could do without the guide's narrative. I was waiting for an opportunity to be alone so I could get lost and find my own way.

Because my attention was on this and not on the other people in the group, I made nothing of the fact that one of them was a pale-skinned redhead.

And when I found a way to go off on my own, I didn't notice that she followed me.

All my attention was on finding clues to where the vampires might be. I knew they lived here, Alice had told me as much. I didn't expect them to leave obvious tracks or anything, so I was looking for something like a fresh bloodless kill, a bare footprint in the mud. In the absence of these, I ended up following broken branches, not feeling too much like a pathfinder. It was ridiculous - with all the books I'd read, I had barely encountered any information to help me find my way in the wilderness. Even though I had dreamed of becoming a vampire, it had not occured to me that I might have use for that kind of knowledge, despite the fact that I would obviously have been spending more time in the wild than in civilization, had I become one.

I looked at the scar on the back of my hand, studied it carefully for the first time since I'd accepted that Edward had left me. My eyes were suddenly burning. _Maybe he left me because I was stupid,_ I though. _Because I didn't do enough research on vampires before deciding I wanted to be one._ No, that was absurd. He had stayed _with_ me because I was stupid, too stupid to survive on my own. He had basically said as much. And he didn't _know_ I wanted to be a vampire, unless Alice had told him after the whole James incident...

"Can't find your way?" said a mocking voice behind me, making me spin around to face it.

There was no one there.

But the voice had sounded so familiar, so silky. I looked around at the rustling of leaves in the treetops. Had they found me? That would be the obvious way of finding predators, wouldn't it? Making them find you. "Hello," I called to the treetops. "I am Bella. I am looking for Edward Cullen. Have you seen him?"

Snickering. Chills went down my spine. The Denalis weren't supposed to eat humans. This flaunting wouldn't be like them; playing cat-and-mouse wouldn't be like them, unless the Cullens had been wrong. Something wasn't right.

"I was supposed to be with him, you see!" I tried. This time the laughter came from the direction in which I had been walking.

"You were that, were you," said the mocking, feline voice as the figure materialized right in front of me. I had only met her for a few minutes last winter, and it took me a moment to recognize her. The flawless, probably Irish features; the blood-red eyes, the flaming red hair...

"Victoria," I whispered.

* * *

The woman standing in front of me grinned viciously. She had crossed her arms over her chest.

"You remember me," she stated, sounding delighted. Her eyes didn't look the least bit delighted; there was something dead in them, something cold. Had it always been there? Was it that way with all human-killing vampires? Why hadn't I noticed before?

"Who could forget," I whispered, knowing she would hear me. My heart hammered against my ribcage. Had she come to kill me, to finish what James had begun? The words came out surprisingly steady for someone facing her death. On the other hand, I didn't think I'd feared death since Edward left me...

It was the thought of Edward so close to the thought of James that made sense of the dead expression in her eyes.

"James... he was your mate?" Still in a whisper. She nodded, surprised.

"How...?"

"I think Edward was my mate," I continued, knowing as I said it that it was true. "But I can't have been his mate, because he left me, still human." I had long since put together the puzzle of what would have happened if Edward hadn't sucked out the venom. I would have been a vampire by now. A strong, beautiful vampire... I looked down at the scar on the back of my hand.

"What's that?" said Victoria. I had almost forgotten her for a moment, it wasn't like she look about to attack or anything.

"James bit me," I replied without thinking. "Edward sucked the venom out. He - he didn't want me to become a vampire." Victoria had grabbed my hand before I was finished speaking. Her cold fingers stroked the crescent on the back of my hand; she looked awed.

"Tell me everything," she said then. "Every last bit of it." _And I might let you live._ She didn't say it, but it was there in her voice, the potential gratitude.

I continued to whisper. I told her how we'd run from James, and she listened impatiently as I narrated how I'd gone back to Phoenix with Alice and Jasper while the others led her mate on a false trail. Her interest peaked once I got to the phone call. "He made me think he had my mother," I explained, the words streaming out of me without any conscious command to my lips. "He told me to get away from Alice and Jasper and come to him in the ballet studio." She listened intently when I told her about our encounter in the ballet studio: how James had taunted me instead of killing me right away, how he'd hurt me and therefore given the Cullens time to arrive before his venom had taken me completely under. I explained how Edward had sucked out the poison from my hand while Carlisle set my broken leg. By the end of it she looked up from the scar on my hand, stared into my eyes, and with a chilling sensation I understood that I had told her what she wanted to know. Whom to get her revenge against. Not Edward or Carlisle, because the were with me; but with the others, for sure. I also saw that she was not feeling grateful enough for this information to let me live. She stroked her cold thumb over my scar with a sense of finality...

And with the speed of lightning, a small figure shot out of the trees behind her, crashing into her with a sharp, metallic, screeching sound. I was pushed, fell, threw myself to one side, and crawled as fast as I could out of the tiny clearing and into some bushes.

Once there I turned to look at what I'd assumed was Victoria getting distracted by a big wild animal. What I saw was a fight, too fast for me to make out, between two angelic white figures. The only discernible colors were their hair, one red and one black, and even those moved too fast to be sure. One figure was tall - Victoria - compared to the other, who seemed to be the size of a twelve-year-old child. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I realized... _Alice. Oh, no. Not her. Not little Alice._

But as I watched - what had it been, a few seconds? - I realized that her size wasn't much of a disadvantage. _Of course, she sees the future... _She knew what Victoria would do the moment Victoria knew. Alice had the moment of surprise on her side - every time, because nothing could surprise her. I tried my hardest not to make up my mind while I considered different ways to distract Victoria to give Alice even more of an advantage, but without distracting Alice with new visions. Before I got far, another angel leaped out of the same trees Alice had come from, this one blonde. I hadn't heard them approach, and surmised I had been too preoccupied with the ongoing fight to hear it. Now the blonde angel joined in; the was a screeching sound like metal being torn apart, and Victoria fled.

The two remaining figures watched her leave and didn't pursue her. The second person, whom I had thought to be Jasper because it would make sense for him to fight by Alice's side, looked more feminine when standing still, her hair stopping at her waist rather than her shoulders like Jasper's would have.

"Rosalie," I whispered, understanding. The two women turned to look at me - a more welcome sight I had never seen - although they looked furious. I wanted to run up and hug Alice - Alice! whom I'd thought I'd never see again - but decided to be cautious instead. I crept out of the bushes and went to support myself against a tree trunk. The adrenalin had burned out, and I felt exhausted, even though I wasn't the one who'd just engaged in a fight against the world most dangerous predator. In an instant, Alice was standing in front of me.

"Are you mad?" she asked in earnest, sounding angry. "Cutting yourself would have distracted me as much as it would her, and the way you did it didn't even distract _her_."

"I'm sorry," I whispered. I seemed to whisper a lot.

Rosalie seemed to be holding a chunk of something white - snow, in the middle of the summer? "We were hunting," she said in her clear, bell-like voice. "We would not have been able to resist fresh blood, either of us." Alice hissed at her sister for a moment, then her eyes fell on the chunk of white, which looked more like stone than snow from this distance. "We should burn it, so she can't have it back."

Burn a rock? Then I understood. "It's a piece of Victoria." No answer. "We'll have to carry it back to the house," Rosalie said to Alice. "Actually," I said, feeling like I might be able to some small thing for them after all, "I have a lighter..." They both looked at me. Their eyes weren't pitch black, but definitely darker than they used to be.

"Okay," said Alice. "Let's burn it here. I can't stand the smell."

* * *

Back in the Denali house, I found that they were all there - all except Edward.

I greeted the three Denali sisters and hugged all the Cullens in turn, for the time ignoring the renewed hollowness in my heart. "I'm so happy to see you again," I whispered, unable to respond to the thought that they had left me because they couldn't stand me. "Alice left me a clue."

"Alice?" Jasper sounded surprised. Alice looked embarassed.

"She left a note in your house," I explained. "It said 'Alaska'. i figured you'd be here." They all stared at me. Esme was the first one to smile. She hugged me again.

"It was the only way I saw Edward be happy again," murmured Alice. "It wasn't a sure thing. Too many factors. And I never saw Victoria there, until she called my attention to herself by deciding to kill Bella anyway..." I wanted to hug her, too, but was afraid she was too mad at me. She opened her arms and embraced me. "She will never get to my sister," Alice declared. Rosalie sniffed. "Either of them," Alice grinned, looking at her.

"What about Edward?" I asked anxiously, no longer able to keep him out of my thoughts.

"We will deal with him," Carlisle replied. "You should get some sleep. You look like you haven't slept in weeks."

"I slept on the bus," I protested weakly, but allowed myself to be led to a bedroom - maybe the only one in the house? I couldn't imagine what they were using it for - and was unconscious before my head hit the pillow.


	4. Changing

_All things Twilight belong to Stephenie Meyer._

* * *

**Changing**

* * *

"Bella, whether to change you is Edward's choice..."

"I beg to differ. Whether Edward will change me is Edward's choice - but Edward doesn't own me. I am not _his!_" I struggled to come up with a more compelling argument than 'being a vampire sounds awesome and I just want to be one'. I wanted to be with Edward, yes, even if he didn't love me. But if it had been up to me, I would have chosen to be a vampire even if I had not been in love with Edward.

"Look, Carlisle..." The centuries-old vampire doctor waited patiently while my thoughts tried to make sense of themselves. "I realize that just _knowing_ about vampires doesn't entitle me to become one. But the advantages, from what I know, seem to outweigh the drawbacks by far. I understand that you believe in Heaven and Hell and all that, and that maybe death as a human would seem like a good thing to you -" he flinched at this, but I wasn't about to stop now, "- but I _don't_, I believe that once I die, I don't exist anymore at all. What if _I'm_ right? Wouldn't it be better for me to make the most out of what I have, even if Edward doesn't... doesn't..." I choked.

"Bella," Carlisle interrupted in a mild voice, "even if you are correct about that, even then you already _can_ make the most of the time you have -"

"No, I can't," I said, sounding like I was about to cry, "I have to waste my time on things like eating and sleeping. You don't, and _you_ get to live longer anyway. It's not fair." My thoughts were incoherent again, having barely made sense a second earlier. "Edward may not... _want_ me." I had never said it out loud before, and it hurt like knives being dug into my flesh. "But I want to live. I don't want to go around and be depressed and suicidal about that. I want to read books and learn languages and maybe have a chance to get over him."

This stopped whatever answer he had prepared. He just looked at me, his eyes full of pity.

"And besides," I added as an afterthought in a hollow voice, "even if _you_ are right, I'm already going to Hell. I already broke the rules." I had wrapped my arms tight around my chest, as if holding it in place.

"I think he would have been my mate," I added after awhile.

Carlisle got up and left the room. I had a hard time feeling anything about this; I was too focused on the aching in my chest.

Alice danced into the room seconds later.

"Edward calls us sometimes," she began, "but he never uses his own phone, he always borrows. He doesn't want us to call him. We don't know how to get in touch with him." She waited for the words to register. I understood what she was saying; I wrenched myself away from my pain. She was saying he had left them, too. I couldn't imagine how. They had seemed such a tight-knit family. Laurent had found it easy to split from his coven, but the Cullens had seemed so much closer than that. I remembered their words to me at the time: they would risk their lives to protect me, because I meant something to Edward. And even now, with Edward gone, two of them had risked much to save my life. Before I had time to think about whether doing to was appropriately respectful, I had stood and embraced Alice.

"He left us all, in the end," I whispered, wondering in some corner of my mind whether it had hurt them more than it had hurt me - inconceivable to me, but they were vampires; they had greater capacity for feelings - or less, which was just as hard to imagine. They had been his _family_, after all.

"Bella, he didn't _leave_ us. He went to hunt Victoria."

"What?" I suddenly felt cold. Edward going after Victoria? Why? Then I understood.

"He saw her as a threat to you," Alice said before I could voice the thought. "Well, she _was_ a threat to you, and probably still is, albeit less so than when she thought it was Edward who killed James." "She sought revenge," I murmured. "And now I have singled out you and Rosalie as her targets."

Alice laughed a pealing laughter. "I think Rose and I can hold our own, as you saw for yourself. She was going after all of us, not just you, so I don't know exactly what has changed. She has been able to hide from my visions since last spring, I think James must have told her. But she was, and may still be, going after you_ first._" She said all this in a calm voice, as if she had been over it before and had accepted the reality of it.

I dared to hope. "Am I still one of you?" I whispered. My voice was useless, it seemed, but at least my whispers made sense to their acute vampire hearing.

Alice threw her arms around me. "Of course! Of course you are, Bella. How could you even doubt that?"

I wanted to cock an eyebrow at her, but my facial muscles were just as useless as my voice. "Because of the last four months?" I managed hoarsely. She gave me a sad look. "I'm very sorry about that, Bella, but it was the only way. I saw Victoria killing your father."

"Charlie!" I squeaked. I hadn't thought of him since I'd left.

"Yes. If we'd stayed... or if she hadn't disregarded you in favor of following us..."

I felt sick. I had to sit down, just as Carlisle came back inside the room.

"I have just spoken to Charlie on the phone," he said, "he was furious as well as relieved. He has been worried." He said all this in a voice that restrained itself carefully from being reprimanding. I felt guilt nudge at the edge of the overwhelming though belated fear for my father's life and the danger I hadn't known he'd been in.

"I explained that you had figured out where we went and decided to come on your own. I told him you were asleep and would call him as soon as you woke up." He handed me the wireless phone he was holding.

* * *

After I got off the phone with Charlie, I felt remarkably lighter, although I still worried in the back of my mind that Victoria would go after him anyway. Alice had assured me he was safe, but what about Victoria's knowing how to dodge Alice's visions?

Charlie had been mad, alright, but he had finally agreed to let me stay in Alaska for awhile. He had to work and couldn't come himself, but didn't want me to waste my summer vacation sitting at home. And he trusted the Cullens. This surprised me somewhat, but I reasoned that he obviously hadn't known the real reason for my depression. He probably thought it had something to do with the "accident" I'd suffered in Phoenix, which, I realized now, must look less like an accident and more like being beaten up by thugs in a dark alley to an experienced cop like him.

The important thing was that I got to stay.

Carlisle suggested that I at least wait until I was eighteen before he turned me. That made me feel warm inside. Yes, of course I could wait two more months, it wouldn't be a big deal. If they felt more comfortable turning me after I was legally old enough - at least in Washington State, I didn't want to wait another year - to make my own decisions, I was fine with that. Maybe eternity would be better for me if I let my brain mature a bit more, too. I could still read a lot - the red-headed Denali named Tanya had told me I could read all the books in the house, if I liked - and spend my last weeks of humanity enjoying it. It wasn't a sure thing, of course, they had told me: there could be more delays, but they had basically consented to turning me so they could keep me in their family. The Denali-sisters were curious, but kept their distance.

The only thing missing was Edward, and we would just have to wait until he called again. He clearly hadn't found Victoria, whose talent was supposedly "dodging", and I wasn't sure I wanted him to. He'd have a similar advantage to Alice in a fight, I knew; but even then, I didn't like the thought of him risking himself.

I had convinced the others to explain first, then present the conclusion. I thought he might be more receptive to it that way. _Hi, Edward, we just found Bella, who has been senselessly depressed since we left, and so we decided to turn her into a vampire with or without your consent. You don't mind that, right?_ Hopefully Esme or Rosalie would phrase it more diplomatically than that, but that was how Emmett had put it, and it was the truth. I didn't care if he didn't want me to become a vampire, this was my decision and I wanted to make it on my own. Yes, I wanted to live forever. I wanted the sharp senses and the swiftness, and, if I were completely honest with myself, I even wanted the beauty. Less-than-optimal cuisine was a small price to pay for all the time it'd free up. Never aging, never sleeping, never dying. I could wait just a little longer.


End file.
